500 MW Rooftop Solar Scheme To Be Submitted To Abu Dhabi

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Abu Dhabi’s electricity regulator is aiming to obtain 7% of the city’s electricity from renewable power sources, and it hopes to implement a rooftop solar scheme to help attain that goal. This will be proposed to the Executive Council in early 2014. The solar rooftop scheme is to generate 500 MW of power.

According to PV-Magazine, the proposal will outline ways in which residents can generate their own emissions-free electricity and sell the excess power back to the electricity grid.

This is one way in which regulators can stimulate the sunny city’s economy — by putting money back in the hands of the people rather than to power companies that would charge people for the solar electricity. It also gets Abu Dhabi closer to the 7% renewable energy goal, reducing power plant emissions and enabling residents to avoid electricity price increases.

Zachary Shahan standing by a parabolic trough solar power plant in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Credit: Zachary Shahan, CleanTechnica.


According to PV-Magazine:

“We’re ready to recommend a solar rooftop plan,” said the regulator’s director general, Nick Carter. “We have sufficient data to tell the government that if they want to go down the feed-in tariff route, this is the price they will have to pay.”

“The cost of solar cells [currently at a global average of US$0.74/W] is not going to get any cheaper,” added Carter, who also spoke about the difficulties faced by Spain and Germany’s FIT schemes. “We’ve been quite cautious in Abu Dhabi. We have been definitely not advocating any feed-in tariffs because we want to be absolutely certain that any scheme we do suggest does not put the government at a disadvantage in 10 years’ time.”

Oversupply has pushed solar cell prices down to incredible lows, and now is a good time to take advantage of that!

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Nicholas Brown

Has a keen interest in physics-intensive topics such as electricity generation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology, energy storage, and geography. His website is: Kompulsa.com.

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